Aimless: Life After Graduating

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This post is more of a diary entry than anything else – I wanted to talk through what my experience has been post-graduation and leaving education.

To state the obvious, it’s a bit of a shock to the system. After sitting in various classrooms over the last 16 years of my life, now that I’ve graduated the first thing that I’m confronted with is a simple question that I kept pushing off because it was too scary: what do I do now? The schedule of a timetable is gone and I’m endlessly applying for jobs, some that I’d be happy to do and others that I’d rather not. The constant rejections and the lack of responses are demoralising – especially after all the effort that I put in over education to get the best results possible. I keep trying to not let myself be bothered by it, but every eagerly anticipated email ending in a “we have decided not to proceed with your application” gnaws away at you.

Of course, I’m in a very privileged position in that I can stay at home while I search for jobs. Right now, I’m trying to do everything I can to build my portfolio with experiences and skills that might help me in getting hired where I want to work - my CV is so much better than it was even a week ago. The main skill that I’m learning in my pretty much full-time job of job hunting is persistence. Keeping some form of schedule has been important to me, and something that I certainly wasn’t doing at the beginning. But reality hit me when I realised that I’m not on holiday from university anymore – this isn’t a break. And while I started off watching days go by, scrolling my phone thinking “I’ll start next week”, next week never came. Putting things off never got me anywhere and while I watched everyone I knew either going back for a master’s degree, finishing their own degrees after a placement year or even finding a job almost immediately, I felt that I was falling behind. And I’m sick of feeling like that. Even this blog that you’re reading right now (thank you by the way) is a way of me showing what I can do, that I’m a talented writer, that I’m capable, that I have something I can do. Now I just need to keep it going.

Life doesn’t stop for anyone – it certainly hasn’t for me. With no guide, everything seems a bit aimless. But I’m going to keep trying.

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